


aw, infinity war

by toujours_nigel



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: Clint Barton's doing fine just fine we're all okay here.





	aw, infinity war

The thing about being friends with Natasha is that it’s like being friends with a cat. No he’s not making a pussy joke. Aw, misogyny.

She’s a great hunter, a delight to watch at work and in motion, a lazy heap whenever not at work, has a tendency to break shit you like when pissed off _and_ a tendency to curl up right on top of you while maintaining an illusion of contemptuous distance. It’s a really good analogy, okay, and he’s fairly proud of himself for making it.

Coulson, who’d been around when he came up with it, had pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Romanoff, door behind the hideous Kandinsky ripoff, ten feet ahead of you.” He’d also had HR schedule a mandatory sexual harassment workshop and told everyone it was because of Clint. Clint had tried fighting back and been flattened by a lecture about derogatory words and intent.

Laura had glared at him, looked horrified and then broken down giggling. Tasha at the time had been contriving to give off the impression that she was staring into the middle distance and not in fact covetously at the year old girl child chewing earnestly and unsuccessfully on a rattle.

He’s never gonna tell Stark. He’s not goddamn stupid.

Only time he says it to Rogers he gets a blank stare, then a shrug when he tries explaining.

When he tells Barnes he rates the first sympathetic reaction he’s got about the whole thing, the metal clink of Barnes’ beer against his. Turns out being friends with Captain America had been like being friends with a cat, too.

“Worse,” Barnes insists. “So much worse. Natalia can clear a building by herself. This guy was five foot nothing, asthmatic, and… Hey, Steve, how come you haven’t told your team you used to stop punches with your face?”

“Still doing it,” Rogers says, looking up from the heap of potatoes getting steadily peeled at the kitchen table. He’s still peeling. Some skills the Army gives you through eternity. “Nothing to tell.”

“’cept for how you got like a tank when I wasn’t looking. Way less effective till then. One time,” Barnes says and from the look on Rogers’ face this is gonna be good, “we musta been about fifteen, I’d just started working at the deli after school, and Steve here took the opportunity of me not being around to haul him outta trouble and took on the Maloney brothers. First time I saw his ma run out of patience.”

“She’d been working double shifts, that’s why she was irritated,” Rogers says, abandoning all pretense of not having been listening in.

“Sure, sure, nothin’ to do with you trying to get into it with… these guys,” Barnes says to Nat, pointing his beer for emphasis, “shaving on the regular at fourteen, working construction at sixteen, two years older than Steve and a foot taller. Steve picked a fight with them over a kitten that died in another week anyhow.”

“Cause they’d broken its leg,” Rogers says, mulish and frowning, fair bit of potato coming off with the peel.

“Nat’s got the same affinity,” Clint says for lack of anything better. “Feeds and takes care of this stray and insists it’s not hers.”

“It’s not,” Natasha says back, automatic, like Clint hasn’t seen the enamel bowls and packets of wet food or Nat for that matter sitting on her fire escape with the cat purring belly-up under her hand.

Barnes shoots him a glance split between commiseration and disbelief. “Natalia, you call the cat bad luck,” he says gamely, cause he’s either unused to the way Nat’s liable to react, or better equipped to take the punishment.

Clint’s betting on the second, because Nat for sure likes Barnes enough to lose her temper with him visibly. Plus, super-soldier. Clint’s not too proud to admit he needles Nat less these days; doesn’t do great things for his ability to walk around next day without wincing. She saves up points of irritation during missions and pays them off after. Or, well, she used to. He’s retired now. Again. Whatever. And in the interim Barnes has gained access to her apartment and her cat. Not that Clint’s judging or worried or protective or unaware that Nat could kill all of them any time she wanted. She might have some trouble with the Hulk, but the rest of them all sleep sometime or the other and he wouldn’t bet even Asgardians survive decapitation. He shouldn’t be thinking about that, worst thing to do freaking yourself out before a mission, and Laura and the kids are safe as can be managed and Stark and Strange are doing something in New York that’s well above his pay-grade and level of comprehension and keep pushing T’Challa to send them Shuri and no way is that gonna end well, he doesn’t think T’Challa walked away with anything like a good opinion of Stark and Clint’s with him, really, Stark’s no good with teenagers and Shuri has the sort of shine he’s kinda proud to have inculcated in Coop and Lila that only shows up in kids that have been indulged but not to excess and he’s really hoping to get to do that for Nate.

“Hey,” Nat murmurs, and he’s not sure when she’s come across the room from her perch on the window-seat. Beans she was shelling are on the table, though, and Rogers has stopped waging his war against the potatoes, so it’s probably been some time. Aw, anxiety.

“Hey,” he says back. “I’m fine, really.”

She darts him a look that signals condescension and pats his hand in a way that conveys it with less subtlety, but she’s warm down his left, deaf side and holding hands with him, so. See previous memo about being friends with Nat and being friends with cats.

Rogers is saying, “And then Sam asked him whether he had a fetish about cats,” when he bothers listening in again.


End file.
